1932: The BBC starts a regular public television broadcasting service in the UK.

1933: The first television revue, Looking In, is broadcast on the BBC. The musical revue featured the Paramount Astoria dancing girls. Broadcast live by the BBC using John Logie Baird's 30-line mechanical television system, part of this performance was recorded onto a 7" aluminum disc using a primitive home recording process called Silvatone. This footage, which runs to just under four minutes, is the oldest surviving recording of broadcast television.

1934: Philo Farnsworth demonstrates a non-mechanical television system. The agreement for joint experimental transmissions by the BBC and John Logie Baird's company comes to an end. First 30 Line Mechanical Television Test Transmissions commence in April in Brisbane Australia conducted by Thomas Elliott and Dr Val McDowall.

1941: First television advertisements aired. The first official, paid television advertisement was broadcast in the United States on July 1, 1941 over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement was for Bulova watches.

1942: FCC terminates all American television broadcasting because of the war; DuMont petitions FCC to resume broadcasting and receives approval

1943: Hänsel und Gretel is the first complete opera to be broadcast on television, but only in New York; first (experimental) telecast of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Many more telecasts of the story will follow in later years, but until film begins to be used on television, no two of the television versions of the story will have the same casts.